Jones still was stomping mad at the intrusion, arguing to the deputy sheriff from town, “Goddamn it, Mallory, can’t this wait until we’re done haying in a few weeks? Harv’s the best stack man I’ll ever have.” Looking sheepish, the local lawman replied that his colleague from up north seemed to be in more of a hurry than that.
By then Rags had strolled up. Mild as the day is long, he drawled, “What seems to be the difficulty?”
Mallory looked like he wanted to go someplace and hide rather than get into the difficulty, but he did his duty, introducing Rags to the strutty little visitor who barely came up to the shoulder of anyone in the gathering except me.
“Thanks for nothing, Mallory,” the Glasgow sheriff huffed out. “You didn’t tell me this is his spread.” He rocked back on his pointy heels, impressed in spite of himself as he took in the most famous cowboy conceivable. “Saw you ride at the Calgary Stampede,” he told Rags, as if that amounted to a private audience. “You do know how to stick on a horse.”
“It’s an honest living,” Rags replied, glancing at the tin star on Kinnick’s narrow chest as if comparing not that favorably. He turned to the other lawman. “What is this, a badge toters’ convention? Should I be charging rent?”
“Sheriff Kinnick says your man here broke out of jail, more than once,” came the reluctant answer.
“We could have told you he’s a hard worker,” Rags said. “Harv, what were you in for?”
“Fighting in a bar.”
Harv aside, every man there gave Sheriff Kinnick a sideways look. Rags scratched his head and spoke the common thought. “Something like that means you could arrest just about everybody on the place, starting with me.”
“That’s as may be,” the little sheriff muttered, glancing around the hostile ring of faces, “but none of you acted up any in my jurisdiction. I’m only interested in this knothead. Or am I.”
It happened then. He peeked past the men in front, spotting me as I tried to fade behind Herman without appearing to. Parting the onlookers, the sheriff headed straight for me, prissing out, “Who’s this I see over here?” with all too much recognition registering in the apple-doll face. “Huh, I thought you was going to visit relatives, punkin. Back east someplace. Doesn’t look like that proved out, does it.” He stopped short as Herman put a protective arm around me. “And just where do you fit into this, Horseface?” he asked suspiciously.
? ? ?
I KNEW IT. The arrest-happy little meanie was out to get us, was going to get us. Our life together, our lives separately, was going to fizzle into separation and incarceration, nightmare coming true.
Herman did his best to face down the challenge, looking squarely at the sheriff with his good eye. “Fritz, is the right name. Scotty’s grandpa, I am.”
“You sure sound like it, Scotch as all get out,” the sheriff said cynically.
“Rasmussen, I’d bet my boots you’re harboring a runaway,” he crowed to Rags, who took that in mutely. “And maybe worse. Seems to me I’ve laid eyes on this mug before—how about you, Mallory?” the preening lawman spoke over his shoulder to the local deputy.
Herman’s clasp of me held firmer than ever as Harv started forward to our aid, but Highpockets stopped him.
“You better think twice about this, Johnny Law,” he warned, stepping in beside Herman and me. The scar at the corner of his mouth was white with anger. “These fellas are with us, they’re not causing you any trouble. You can’t breeze in here from bare-ass nowhere and start picking us off just because you feel like it. Take a look around you. This isn’t some goddamn freight yard and you’re the yard bull.” Behind him, Skeeter and Peerless and Fingy and Midnight Frankie and Shakespeare and Pooch ranged around us in support.
“Oh, can’t I breeze in here, like you say, and make an arrest?” The sheriff smirked and fingered his star as a pointed reminder. “Who’s wearing the badge around here?”
That was the wrong thing to do. Something like a spell came over the hoboes, if a general sense of fury can be called that. I could see it in their eyes, the pent-up rage and hate from years of railyard bulls and Palookaville hick dicks beating them and throwing them into jail and kicking them out of town, the badge of authority the mark of adversity in their lives, Pooch a living reminder among them of the billy clubs of the law.
As the sheriff turned and strutted toward Harv, after warning Herman and me not to move, Highpockets murmured without moving his lips, “Skeeter, pass the toothpicks.” Discreetly the old hobo drifted off to the shop where Herman sharpened things.
“C’mon, Harv, let’s arrange some free board and room in lovely Wolf Point for you,” the sheriff busied up. “Get in the patrol car. Front seat. Leave room in the back for other customers.” He glanced back to check on Herman and me. I kept looking to Rags, still standing easy to one side, keeping Jones under control. If things were a matter of timing like he said, wasn’t it about time to rein in this busybody lawman who was ready to cart Herman and me off to our doom along with Harv?
Meanwhile Harv folded his arms on his chest. “No.”